


something old

by availedobscurity



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, a little bit, alessandra's very good apartment and very good wife, alessandra's wife is here also, juno messed up offscreen and alessandra has feelings about it, penumbra exchange 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 05:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13241130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/availedobscurity/pseuds/availedobscurity
Summary: Alessandra Strong has an unwelcome wake-up call.





	something old

**Author's Note:**

  * For [achievingelysium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/achievingelysium/gifts).



> this is another penumbra exchange gift for tumblr user riftoflotr, who asked for some gen alessandra strong content! i hope you enjoy!

The alarm outside the front door let out a single shrill blare of warning, rising and then dissipating to nothing. That was all it managed before Alessandra Strong was out of bed, quickly inputting the two 48-digit codes it demanded in exchange for silence. Normally she would work with less haste, but she didn’t want to wake her wife before they had a visual. It was a welcome change to handle an armed robber with a partner, instead of having to muddle through with just her fists and whatever weapons she had hidden beneath chairs and tables for company. She had promised they would tackle the next intruder together, but Alessandra had been asleep for most of the trip home, and her wife hadn’t. They had agreed to sleep in shifts, but the two of them had a tendency to get competitive, and Alessandra’s sleeping face was, she had been informed, ‘a sight to behold’. Whatever that meant. It usually sounded like more of a tease than a compliment.

Her wife’s most neutral sleeping face, on the other hand, was oddly angry, probably learned from years of being kept prisoner by a dwindling army, but right now it was soft and blank and she was drooling a little onto the pillow and Alessandra wasn’t going to disturb her unless she absolutely had to. She carried the screen out of their room and opened the visual feed to the cameras hidden in the doorbell, the corner of the door frame, the hallway lighting fixture, and the eleven other possible entryways to their small apartment for good measure.

There was a person, or at least something distinctly person-shaped, outside the door. She once again thanked her past self for splurging on infrared and night vision cameras. They made it much easier to get a clear view through the pre-sunrise dark and general Midtown smog. The alternate entrypoints looked clear, but she kept an eye on them; there was no such thing as too cautious.

The figure in front of her door had a package under his arm. Anyone who knew anything about her wife wouldn’t leave a bomb on their door expecting it to put a scratch on them; she was a now-known expert in disarming explosives, and knowing when to run if she couldn’t. But it could be a distraction, or something more malicious. A threat, a virus, a… 

The figure turned.

She let out an annoyed puff of air through her nose, and moved to the front door as silently and tactically as she could.

Undoing the chains and deadbolts in an efficient line of clicks and turns and rattles, she swung the door open so it thudded straight into the wall.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up here, Steel,” she hissed, grabbing him by his free arm and giving it a tug towards the doorway. He let out a small yelp, then put on that stupid self-conscious grin of his that meant he was about to try to get out of this in the worst way possible. He was sweating already, and she felt her face rearranging into a signpost of exasperation.

“Yeah, ha, great night for a walk, right?” he said. “I was just, dropping off a late wedding gift, so, great seeing you, I’ll be on my way,” he said, and tried to turn to walk off, but she kept her grip tight.

“No, you don’t,” she said, and pulled him so that they were as eye-to-eye as they could be, given the height difference. “Come inside,” she said, and she used her voice like a threat. “Let’s chat.”

“Married life getting dull already?” Juno asked as she dragged him through the door and shut it behind her, and she fixed him with a gaze that fractured him like a laser cutter on badly-tempered glass.

“Steel, I’m going to say this and I’m going to say this once,” she said, shoving him in the general direction of the kitchen chairs. He sat, automatic, and swallowed. “If you make it weird again - if you put your mouth anywhere near the general direction of my mouth again - I am going to pick you up and toss you out that window like a lawn dart.”

She wouldn’t, and they both knew that, but the idea of it was enough to get Steel to shut up and put the box on the table. She stood over him, arms crossed.

True to form, Juno broke first.

“Nice place,” he said. “I can see why you wanted to keep it. Those original?” he asked, gesturing towards the window in a hopeless attempt to delay to inevitable.

“You came all the way out here to talk about my pocket shutters?” she asked. “Because I thought that, with you coming around here at four in the morning to drop off a late wedding gift, maybe there was something else on your mind. Like, maybe,” she fixed him with a disbelieving, exasperated look, “an apology?”

Juno retracted into his shoulders. “I don’t--” he started, and Alessandra placed a hand on either side of the chair back behind him and leaned down, eyes on fire.

 _”You brought a terrorist to my wedding,”_ she said, struggling to keep her tone even.

“I didn’t _bring_ a terrorist to your wedding. A terrorist followed me to your wedding.” He held out a hand and leaned towards her as if that were a good point, or any point at all. “That’s different.”

“You weren’t. Invited,” she said.

“Then how was I supposed to know it was your wedding?” he asked, wielding affront as if it were self-defense. “Send a lady an announcement next time.”

“I vetted everyone on my guest list six times. You know why I did that, why I didn’t stop at three, or four, or five?” she asked, her voice as calm as it could be with Juno around. 

“Same reason you brought two weeks worth of food on a trip to the subway?” he asked under his breath.

“Don’t press your luck, Steel, I’m mad about that too,” she said, holding up what was left of her hand. “The reason I ran background checks, and made everyone pass through a metal detector, and got a few people in to run security for me while I was busy saying my vows, was so that my wife and I could have a nice, quiet, _terrorist-free_ wedding ceremony after her years as a prisoner of war, Steel. And then do you know what happened?”

“Yeah, well, there’s your mistake, there’s no such thing as an uneventful wedding,” he said, voice the sound of like a prisoner reaching brick at the end of their spoon-carved tunnel.

“Really? Because here’s how I see it,” she said, and switched hands to hold up one finger. “Rehearsal dinner. No Juno Steel. No terrorists.” She held up another finger. “First hour of my wedding. No Juno Steel. Still no terrorists. Second hour of my wedding.” She pointed at him. “You show up. And what do we have here? A terrorist! At my wedding!” The chair was starting to tip back, and her voice was rising. She let go, roughly, and took a step back. 

A deep breath, in and out. Juno’s eyes were wide, his body language stiff, as if he might even be taking this seriously.

“I met you twice,” Alessandra said, “And they were the two of the most stressful events of my life and I was in a war, Steel. I got caught in a _death cult_ , and you still managed to top that! And so I thought,” she said, “Steel’s fine, and he probably needs to talk to somebody about,” she gestured at him as a whole, for want of a better way to describe the things that Steel needed to talk to a professional about, “but maybe let’s keep his whole deal separate from one of the most important days of my life. But somehow you still made it happen, Steel! You brought your whole brand of complicated fiascos to my wedding!” He opened his mouth to speak. “With a terrorist!” she said, before he could derail the conversation.

“Yeah, well, a good wedding makes a bad marriage, so really you and your wife should be thanking me,” Juno said, and Alessandra gaped at his mental gymnastics.

“There’s a difference between my cousins getting into another fistfight at the buffet and _defusing a bomb at the altar,_ ” she said when she recovered from her state of dumbfoundedness.

“Yeah, she did great work,” he said. “You know she could do that when you were dating, or was that a new thing? You two ever go defuse bombs together after a nice walk through the park?” he started, and Alessandra held out a hand to silence him.

“You think you can distract me by making me think about how much I love my wife? Let me let you in on a little secret, Steel.” She leaned down towards him again. “I’m always thinking about how much I love my wife.”

He closed his mouth, then opened it again. “That’s… really nice,” he said, and she was surprised to see earnestness in him. “You seem really,” he looked away, “happy, together.”

She tilted her head, analyzing him. “Thanks,” she said skeptically. “We are.” He visibly relaxed. “Except the part where someone brought a terrorist to our wedding.”

He let his shoulders fall. “I didn’t bring him! It just happened! It’s not like I was trying to bring a terrorist to your wedding!”

She let out a hard breath through her nose. “Is that really the hill you want to die on, Steel? The semantics of how the terrorist you were investigating got to my wedding?”

“I’ll die on any hill, I’m not picky about it,” Juno said, and Alessandra took a moment to stare at the ceiling.

She made her hands into fists, then opened and closed them a couple of times before looking back at Juno. “Steel. All I want is for you to say, Yes, Alessandra, I am responsible for the terrorist at your wedding. That’s not even an apology. Can you manage that? Can you say, I brought the terrorist to your wedding, turned the whole thing into a media circus, and then didn’t even have the decency to stick around?”

Juno sighed, and cast his eyes to the floor while he murmured something into his chest.

“Wanna repeat that?” Alessandra asked.

“I brought a terrorist to your wedding,” Juno mumbled, staring downwards.

 _Good enough._ “Thank you,” she said, and pulled up a chair. “Now, what are you doing outside my apartment at four in the morning, Steel? Because it sure doesn’t seem like you were there to apologize.”

“Like I said.” He nodded his head towards the box he had brought with him. It was pretty well-wrapped. The paper seemed a little high-end, even, sturdy and thick enough to hide the edges of the box beneath it. “Wedding gift,” he said. “You’re not supposed to show up at the ceremony without one. So I got you one.”

“You, or Rita?” Alessandra asked skeptically.

“Me, Strong,” Juno asked, sounding more insulted than she had ever heard him.

She leaned an elbow on the table and examined him. “Didn’t know you were such a traditionalist,” she said, and took the box, occasionally glancing up at him as she undid the wrapping. It peeled apart easily, like the tape had lost some of its adhesive. “I hope it’s not more kevlar. Closet’s been pretty crowded.”

“Yeah, I had a feeling you two might have that covered,” he said as she undid the last seam in the wrapping and revealed the gift beneath.

“A clock?” she asked.

“I just wanted it out of the house. Thought you two could use it,” he said, looking away. “Didn’t really plan to be around when you opened it.”

“This thing must be ten, fifteen years old,” she said, turning it in her hands, and Juno shrugged like he was trying to twitch a hand off of his shoulder. “It’s nice though. Has character.” It was bigger than she was looking for, but she liked having clocks and timepieces around. She had schedules to keep, and it was easier to make the most of her time when she knew how quickly it was passing. “But aren’t timepieces supposed to be for the one-year?” He twitched again, and this time it shook his whole body.

“Yeah, well, consider it, I don’t know. A statement of confidence in your, your union, or something. I just wanted it out of my apartment.”

“Right,” she said. “What better way to do spring cleaning, than to drop gifts mysteriously on your acquaintances’ doorsteps in the dead of night.”

“Yeah,” he said, determinedly avoiding looking in her direction.

She sighed. It really was a beautiful piece; all gears and metal and translucent marble, the five faces nested into each other in rings that orbited their central tracks. “This doesn’t make up for bringing a terrorist to my wedding,” she said, and their eyes met. “But it’s a good first step.”

Juno shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, and I’m saying this as a guest--”

“You weren’t invited,” Alessandra repeated.

“--I’ve been to a lot of weddings that went way worse,” he said.”Been in a few of them, too.”

“Oh?” she asked. “Grab a drink, I could use some disaster wedding stories. Probably’ll make me feel a little better about the terrorist. Maybe the wife’ll show up and you can find enough decency in you to apologize for making her defuse a bomb in a wedding gown.”

Juno looked towards her liquor cabinet longingly, then shook his head. “I should get back to work. Lots of terrorists to keep from disturbing another work acquaintance’s nuptials.”

Alessandra glared. “Too soon.”

“Thought it might be,” Juno said, and got up. “See you around, Strong.”

“I’m sure I will,” she said, and watched him approach her locks like a puzzle. He stared at them silently for a moment, reaching for the mechanisms and then drawing his hand back with confusion.

Alessandra watched him with amusement. “They lock automatically, Steel.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good apartment.”

“Yep,” she said. “Glad I got to hold onto it.”

“Yeah,” Juno said, and then he was out the door.

Alessandra sat and studied the clock in her hands. It had a history to it, she could tell. And would probably go for a lot of creds to the right collector. She almost felt bad taking it. 

But not that bad.

She slouched a little in her chair, deciding whether she should bother trying to go back to sleep. The question was answered by heavy footfalls, loud despite their bare feet. “Babe?” her wife asked. “Was that another hitman?”

“No, I would’ve woken you up for a hitman,” Alessandra said as she felt a chin rest on her head with a little yawn. “Steel came back. Brought a gift.” She gestured at the clock and leaned back while her wife wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

“He brought a bomb to our wedding, then gives us a gift that ticks,” she observed sleepily. “Want me to shoot him? We can make it look like an accident,” she added sleepily, and Alessandra laughed.

“Let’s take this one crisis at a time,” she said, and reached up to kiss her wife good morning.


End file.
